


through the looking glass

by kwritten



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:00:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1449466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: Teen Wolf, Allison/Lydia, I see signs all around me all the time, that you're not dead, just sleeping; I'll believe in anything that brings you back to me</p>
            </blockquote>





	through the looking glass

_They told me in the morning that you were dead and I think I waited to scream until then._

 

 

Hospitals are becoming too familiar, she thinks as she wakes up. There are tubes in her arms and an ache in her head. There’s a long, lanky boy sitting in a chair waiting for her and he’s asleep and she thinks how handsome he is even in the stark white room of the hospital. They all see her eventually, your wide eyes looking for a face that is missing and when they all stutter-stop around them she seethes inside because if that lanky boy in his chair is alive and well, then so should you. 

 

A boy takes her hand and she wonders at the world, that she is always surrounded by boys pretending to be men, fighting a war they can only lose.

Which is why it isn’t all that surprising when they tell her that you are gone and died in their arms. 

(Not hers.)

(Never hers.)

(You belong in her arms, but they are the ones that held you.)

She laughs and they pat her back like they understand, but where their hands touch her skin she feels fire and ice; her skin crawls to be rid of them.

 

 

In the silence (you) they leave behind, she screams once – long and loud, calling out to you.

 

 

 _You are my siren,_ she whispers as she climbs out the window. _I know you can hear me._

 

 

(They watch her search for you. They watch with smiles and with pity. She doesn’t know she’s the one who is lost. She doesn’t see the paths she follows are her own.

In the corner of your eye, sometimes, you can almost see her. Fierce and proud. Stronger than ever. With her bow slung over one shoulder. She never grows older and you curse the wrinkles in the mirror that prove time keeps going on and on. 

She’s searching for you. You don’t have the heart to tell her she’s the one who is lost. She gets so close sometimes, tugging at the thin veil between you. 

You keep living because you are a survivor. 

She can wait.

She wouldn’t want you to do anything less than live.)

 

(You cling to the idea that she will find a way to come rescue you.  
Sometimes living feels like being lost.  
You understand her fight, her will, her strength.

 

The world isn’t real without her.)

 

 _It’s not true,_ she whispers to the darkness after their pitying faces finally leave her to her grief, lying on a hospital bed. _I can’t live without Lydia. I have to find her._

 

 

Reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Death is the space in between.

 

Lydia wonders sometimes which one of them is trapped.

 

_I guess it doesn’t really matter._  
What’s that, Lydia?  
Which one of us died.  
Why do you say that?  
Because the world ended just the same. 

 

Therapists don’t live in a world where the ghosts of teenage girls can be real. They smile pointedly and scribble notes to themselves (probably grocery lists and reminders about Timmy’s soccer practice.)

 

(It keeps you going. 

Knowing that she feels the same way. Knowing that she is somewhere waiting for you to make the world real again.)

 

_Why don’t you try to rebuild?_  
Rebuild what?  
Your life.  
What’s the point?  
You’re still alive. Wouldn’t she want you to … live?  
She’d want me to find her. Save her. That’s what we do. We protect each other.  
But she died.  
No. I did. 

 

 

Like Alice through the Looking-glass. Sometimes Lydia looks at her reflection in the mirror and wonders what would have happened if she had died instead. What would Allison have done? How would she fix this?

(There’s no question of ‘getting past this’ – Lydia will fix this. She will be useful. She will be the hero. She will save someone if it is the last thing she does.)

 

 

 

They stand by a grave and cry silent tears and they are side by side but one is living and one is dead and they know longer know which is true and which is false. Lydia kneels in the dirt and buries her fingers in the soil and screams because she is the wailing woman and her voice is her call. 

Allison squares her shoulders and runs back into the fight, her arrow will pierce its way to an answer.

 

(Lydia thinks maybe that’s why she’s still alive.  
Her shadow-ghost always running and tumbling and leaping while she stays still.)

 

 _Idiot_ , she whispers to no one in particular. And she brushes the dirt off of her hands and knees. And she walks herself back home through the dark.

 

 

The shadows can’t scare her anymore.


End file.
